‘It gets better,’ Jack Harkness remarks, perhaps having viewed the rushes of Episode 7, ‘then it gets worse again.’ If any story is a microcosm of the season as a whole, it’s this one. There are plenty of good ideas and a lot of entertainment, but there are also some horribly misjudged scenes that should never have made it to transmission, some performances that could kindly be called unconvincing, and – most tediously of all – a woeful lack of exposition. We’ve been waiting seven weeks to find out who’s behind the Miracle. Surely, finally, this time around, we’re going to get the answers we need?
Jane Espenson’s ‘Immortal Sins’ leaps back and forth between the present – Gwen kidnapping Jack to save her family from the bad guys – and the past – Jack meets Angelo Colasanto (Daniele Favilli) in Depression-era New York, indulges in some full-on rumpo, discovers an alien parasite reminiscent of a certain beast in Flash Gordon and dies about a million times. This all works for about ten minutes, then quickly becomes annoying.
While there are some nice references to Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures (really!), Arthur C. Clarke and a Sapphic leapfrog jamboree – hopefully Sky Sports have already snapped up the rights – in one era and some enjoyably emotive swearing between the last two surviving members of the original Torchwood team in another (‘I bloody loved it!’; ‘You bastard… nice try!’), the whole thing would have worked better if they’d simply dedicated the entire episode to the 1920s instead of trying to fit it in between bursts of Gwen being angry.
Eve Myles has been strangely inconsistent in Miracle Day, and true to microcosmic form, this episode showcases the best and worst of her performance without Gwen even having to move from the front seat of her car. The scene in which she guiltily admits enjoying being a member of Torchwood, even when her colleagues were being slaughtered all around her, is as wonderful as it is unexpected; but when she hisses ‘Button it!’ at Jack, it’s the most disappointing kind of ham-dram. Both actress and character are capable of much better.
Meanwhile, John Barrowman finally gets to flex his acting muscles rather than simply pressing the switches marked ‘flirtatious smile’, ‘moment of tense drama’ and ‘Welcome to my new primetime light-entertainment show’. Mostly, he succeeds – and is rewarded with the most sex and violence Torchwood has ever seen.
After a faintly uneasy seduction (in which Jack finally mentions his polysexual predilections, noting ‘I like a lot of things’ when he spots an attractive Amy Winehouse lookalike across the street), he and Angelo get down to business in a scene that’s far hotter than anything we’ve seen previously and will probably cause consternation due to the amount of flesh that’s flashed. True, there is plenty of gluteus Barrowmus on display both during and afterwards, but it’s not gratuitous in the way the encounter in Episode 3 between Jack and an anonymous barman was. It does, however, make one wonder what was so shocking that the BBC felt compelled to apply the editing scissors to the earlier scene.
Something that could definitely have done with more than just a little topiary, though, is the gruesome sequence in which Jack is hung from a butcher’s hook and stabbed to death, over and over again. If there’s anything in Torchwood that might be considered pornographic, it’s this literally tortuous, protracted and sadistic sequence that serves no real purpose except to provide an economy-sized moment of deification afterwards, when Angelo washes blood from the feet of Jack Christ. Goriness isn’t a problem except when it’s pointless – and here, despite a momentary and unexplained appearance of three men making a triangular handshake (well, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ hadn’t come out in 1927 – how else could they make themselves look all Miracley?) it’s an inane miscalculation.
Then, thanks to Rex and Esther, everything’s sorted out in the blink of an Eye-5. Jack finds his coat in a chimney, Gwen’s family are freed and – finally – we get what looks like some explanation: it’s Angelo who is behind the Miracle. ‘He’s been waiting for such a very long time,’ an anonymous Blessing-related woman remarks to Jack of his former lover. We know how he feels.
Airs at 9pm on Thursday 25th August 2011 on BBC One.